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June 6, 2005

A result in Raich and, of course, Booker GVRs

As always, SCOTUSblog is the go-to place for news and commentary on today's work by the Supreme Court, and How Appealing is the go-to place for links to media coverage. As detailed in this post by Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog, the biggest criminal justice news today is that the Court in Raich ruled 6-3 "that Congress had the authority to make it a crime to grow and use marijuana purely for personal medical purposes when recommended by a doctor [and thus] overturned a Ninth Circuit ruling that the federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970 exceeded Congress' Commerce Clause power when applied to medical marijuana used under California law." Justice Stevens wrote the opinion for the Court in Raich, and Justice Scalia concurred in the judgment and wrote an opinion. Justice O'Connor wrote the principal dissent, joined by the Chief Justice and Justice Thomas, and Justice Thomas also wrote a separate dissent.

And, of course, what would be a big day at SCOTUS without more Booker-inspired GVRs? I count a dozen more Booker GVRs on this order list, which I believe takes the total to somewhere around 750.

UPDATE: SCOTUSblog in this post has links to the four Raich opinions, and Orin Kerr is already promising lots of Raich commentary over at The Volokh Conspiracy. Mike at Crime & Federalism here notes that "Supreme Court experts had predicted a 9-0 or 8-1 victory for the government, so in a sense, this is a victory for enumerated powers advocates and social justice." Mike also makes the trenchant comment that "Justice Stevens and the other liberals on the Court have continually overlooked the fact that the federal criminal justice system falls disparately upon blacks."

BETTER UPDATE: In response to a very sensible comment, here is a link to the full Raich opinion (which, in case anyone is counting, clocks in at 79 total pages and thus is still 45 pages shorter than all the Booker opinions).